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Concept
Critias
Summary
Critias (ˈkrɪtiəs; Κριτίας, Kritias; c. 460 – 403 BC) was an ancient Athenian, known today for being a student of Socrates, a writer of some regard, and the leader of the Thirty Tyrants, who ruled Athens for several months after the conclusion of the Peloponnesian War in 404/403.
Critias was the scion of one of the premier families in Athens. The evidence for his lineage comes from several sources and there are numerous gaps in what they have to say. The reconstruction in Davies’ Athenian Propertied Families is the most reliable and his discussion covers all the unknowns and suppositions. Without detailing the uncertainties here, as best we know, his ancestors were:
The progenitor of the family was Dropides, who lived in the 7th century BCE. He had two sons: Critias I and Dropides II. The latter was a “relative and a dear friend” of Solon, the lawgiver of Athens. Both men were in their prime at the beginning of the 6th century BCE and Dropides served as archon eponymous shortly after Solon held that position in 594/3. Solon died in the late 560s; presumably Dropides did as well.
Dropides II was the father of Critias II, who lived into the late 6th century.
The son of Critias II was Leaides, who is known only from an ostracon dating to the 480s, which named “Critias [III] son of Leaides” as the miscreant deserving of exile. It was discovered in a well near a road southwest of the Athenian agora in 1936.
Critias III in turn had Callaeschus, the father of Critias IV, the tyrant.
The family clearly had a long and illustrious (if at times contentious) history in Athenian politics. In addition to the Solon connection, they were related to Plato’s family, equally well established among the Athenian elite, and also to the family of the orator Andocides.
Little is known of Critias’ early years. Athenaeus reported that he was a trained aulos player. He was best attested as a poet, with a variety of forms to his credit: hexameters, elegies and dramas. Among the plays tentatively assigned to him are Tennis, Rhadamanthys, Pirithus, and the satyr play Sisyphus.
Official source
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